Herhold: Four reasons why the bad guys lost

I do not mean to overstate the case. But we can pat ourselves gently on the back after last Tuesday's primary election. There were signs -- tentative but clear -- that voters sniffed out the fools and pretenders and chose a better class of candidate.

In San Jose's 5th Council District, Magdalena Carrasco defeated the ethically burdened Xavier Campos outright. And in the 10th State Senate District, convicted Neiman Marcus shoplifter Mary Hayashi lost her bid for a runoff to Bob Wieckowski and Peter Kuo.

Tim Donnelly, with wife Rowena, waves to supporters after he concedes his run for California governor , June 3, 2014.
(Ringo H.W. Chiu / AP)

Before the election, I had put all the losers on my dis-endorsement list (DL), but I don't pretend that was why they lost. Four other reasons were at work:

1) It was a low-turnout election, estimated at about 20 percent statewide. That means that the people who actually did show up at the polls were more committed and probably had spent more time preparing how to vote.

"Most of the time, with a low turnout, you have a more informed electorate," says Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone, who was re-elected Tuesday without opposition.

There is irony here: Most of us believe deeply that voter turnout matters. It's our birthright. We want the dispossessed to have a voice in their government. But a lower turnout often means that the voters are less casual.

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2) What should have been the main feature locally, the San Jose mayor's race, was a dud in the primary. There's no real surprise to this: The candidates knew that attacks could backfire in a five-way race. The race could have been mistaken for an Emily Post seminar in dining etiquette.

The effect of that was to allow more attention on obscure races, like Ritchie's bid for re-election, or the attempt by attorney Dennis A. Lempert to run as D A Lempert, a ploy to coax people into thinking he was a prosecutor. Lempert, thankfully, was trounced by Deputy District Attorney Julianne Sylva.

Don't count on this dynamic repeating itself in November. The race for mayor between Supervisor Dave Cortese and Councilman Sam Liccardo will be much more nasty. Nonetheless, Ritchie was seriously wounded by finishing second in the primary.

3) There are signs that Republicans are coming to their senses. Again, I do not mean to overstate the case. For the last 20 years, the party has shown itself to be remarkably obtuse to the changes sweeping the state.

But in selecting Kashkari over Donnelly, they picked an attractive moderate who is unburned by socially conservative positions against abortion or gay marriage. Kashkari has no chance to unseat Gov. Jerry Brown. But his selection is a sign of renaissance in the party.

The state's new "top-two" primary system, which decrees that the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to November, arguably helped in the result. At the least, it engaged independents sympathetic to Kashkari's message.

4) The Internet and social media have made it more likely that blemishes will remain before the voters. The clearest evidence of this was the labor effort against Hayashi, which featured Web pages that felt like a lurid criminal file -- mug shot included.

Hayashi deserved all it. She never really gave an adequate explanation for shoplifting $2,450 worth of goods. But in an earlier era, the attack would not have had the echo chamber effect that this one did.

Like I say, this is not a sea change in the way we select our candidates. State Sen. Leland Yee, accused of gunrunning and political corruption, gathered more than 300,000 votes in the secretary of state's race -- more than a qualified independent, Dan Schnur.

Voters remain busy, and they don't always follow the ins and outs of a campaign. But it's becoming harder to remain blissfully ignorant of the warts of our elected officials.